With body and mind refreshed, Savery  shines

It is baseball’s annual June feast, when lawn-chair carrying men in straw hats sit before the world’s biggest buffet table to sample strong arms and minds, swift feet and sturdy swings hardly suited for wrap-around porches on a soft summer night.

This is serious business, after all.

Joe Savery, likely the best two-way college player in the nation during his three storied years at Rice, was drafted 19th overall by the Phillies in 2007.

The left-hander didn’t come cheap. He didn’t come off the rack. He was not one of the bargain-basement buys who would come much later with as-is price tags attached to their minimal skills.

Joe Savery was an Armani among the Hickey-Freemans, so it was not surprising that the Phillies invested nearly $1.4 million for his singular talents.

Some insist he was over-priced, that if you looked closely you could find flaws in the tailoring, some reconditioning in certain areas of the expensive fabric. They were talking, of course, about the shoulder surgery Savery underwent after his sophomore year.

The thing is, if Savery had stayed healthy, if he didn’t need repairing, he likely would have gone higher in the draft, for even more cash and different suit of game clothes. And if he remained a power pitcher, throwing 92-94 mph instead of the 89-91 he carries to the mound these days, would his win-loss numbers be any better than their current 10-1, with a snug 3.03 ERA?

Hard to say. And who says his velocity won’t creep up a notch or two as he matures, grows stronger and distances himself from the 2006 labrum surgery. After all, this was the same guy getting it up there an alarming 84-86 mph last year at Clearwater, where the schadenfreude gang was ready to throw him to the Phillies’ cluttered closet of failed No. 1 pitching picks. Where the Scott Munninghoffs, Rip Rollinses, Pete Smiths, Brad Brinks and Pat Combs became moth food.

Joe Savery admits he had similar thoughts last year, especially when the Phillies began using him as designated hitter. Can you say Rick Ankiel?

“I think things finally caught up with me last year,” said Savery, bright and amiable. “I really had just six weeks of no throwing (between the surgery and last summer).”

There also came reports last year that the 6-3, 215-pounder had put on some unproductive weight and was out of shape. Savery disagrees, to a point.

“I didn’t gain any weight,” he said. “I think I got a little stronger up top and maybe rearranged my body a little bit. It depends on whom you ask. For me, I definitely could have been in a little better shape, but I think I was just flat out of gas.”

He finished 2008 with a 9-10 record and a 4.13 ERA (including a 4-1, 2.76 August when he cut back on his between-games routine). Skepticism is always evident in politics and player drafts, and the doubters were out in full force.

How did Savery respond? By enjoying three months of zero productivity.

“I did nothing, by design,” he said about last offseason. “I just tried to let my body recover from the last two years. Once the holidays hit I got with a nutritionist and started eating better. I got on a good workout program and really tried to get my body in the right place.”

He also did more than a little soul-searching.

“I’ve never lacked for the physical side of things,” said Savery, who went 11-0 as a pitcher and hit .556 as a first baseman his senior year at Lamar High near Houston. “Last year at the end I was just a different kind of player. It was just blatant how flat-out different my stuff was than it had been in the past. When you’ve had a lot of success you don’t comprehend it being taken away from you. I didn’t know if it would come back again. I knew I needed some rest; I knew I needed to get in a little better shape, but at the same time I didn’t know if that was going to change anything.

“And I definitely questioned what kind of player I was going to be capable of being.

“I had to come to peace with the idea that baseball isn’t going to last forever, so I just had to reflect on my life and say, ‘I’m going to be OK with whatever happens.’ ”

Let’s put that last statement in perspective. We’re talking about a special athlete who was a good enough quarterback in high school to play Division I. We’re talking about a three-time All-American, who was the national Freshman of the Year as a collegian. A guy who, as good a pitcher as he was (11-1, 2.99 ERA as a junior), was an even better hitter (.356, 6-60 in 2007).

And despite his quiet demeanor off the field, he can be a bulldog on it. He suffered a broken right hand playing in the NCAA Super Regionals his freshman year, stayed in the game, and bunted for an RBI hit. The next day, at top-ranked Tulane, he came back to allow one run and four hits in 6.2 innings of gritty work.

“He competes,” is the way Phillies pitching coach Steve Schrenk put it. “Right now I think that’s the biggest thing for him. He goes after guys. He’s had the walks, but he’s making pitches when he needs to. He doesn’t give in to hitters.”

Savery became the first Double-A pitcher to reach 10 wins this year and that’s gotten everybody’s attention, but early on he seemed to be pitching tentatively, away from contact, and the walks piled up. Recently he went to a two-seam fastball and the results have been remarkable. In four June starts (prior to Friday’s rain-shortened start) he was 5-0 with a 1.76 ERA. He had struck out 21 and walked just 11 in 30.2 innings. Batters hit a ridiculous .173 in that span.

“The idea of walking too many people didn’t come to me till last year,” Savery said about his earlier command problems. “In college nobody talked to me about my walks. To me, at the end of the day it was how many guys scored and how many guys didn’t. Pro ball is a lot different. You’ve got to save the bullpen; you’ve got to eat up some more innings; there are better hitters; and the home run becomes more of a factor. So the walks do become an issue.

“Last year that was kind of a foreign idea to me. I was still getting more walks here, and I wasn’t pitching great, but I didn’t think that was the biggest issue. I do realize that it (the amount of walks) had to get better. I didn’t necessarily think talking about it (so much) was necessary.”

Joe Savery is pitching free and unencumbered now, like a man dancing with nobody looking. He seems at peace with himself and where he is career-wise and has begun the process of letting go of lofty expectations.

“What I had as a pitcher has changed,” he said. “Before the surgery I threw a little harder; I was consistently in the low-90s, occasionally in the mid-90s in the middle of a game. Everything was sharper, harder. I was definitely a power pitcher. I think I still pitch with a power mentality, but I don’t have that explosiveness that I had, so I have had to learn things like a two-seam fastball to try to get a little more movement and miss barrels a little more.

“I’ve always felt I could compete with anyone. I knew I wasn’t going to be a 90-94 guy again, but if I could just sit in the high 80s I knew I could figure out how to make this work. No question, right now I know that I can compete with my stuff where it’s at. I’m happy with that, but if it (the old velocity) comes back, that would be great, too.

“I love to compete; that’s why I do this. I love baseball, but I love to compete more than I love baseball. This year I’ve tried to focus more on helping my team win rather than personal gain. If you worry about yourself all the time and how you’re moving (in the organization) and how the guys around you are pitching it can become a tough mind game, and it’s not worth it (thinking about).”

Schrenk has seen the improvement in Savery.

“I think he’s matured as a pitcher a little bit,” he said, “and realizes what he can do without throwing hard. He’s lost that velocity he had in college. He had to learn how to pitch all over again with less stuff. He’s starting to do that now and he’s starting to realize what kind of pitcher he is. Maybe that velocity will come back, but right now it’s just a matter of learning how to pitch.”

The money is nice, but carrying around that No. 1 mantle can be wearisome. Much is expected of top picks. They certainly are looked at differently by the pundits.

“It is to be expected,” Savery reasoned. “What people, even players who are in the game, don’t understand is that even though I was a high pick, it doesn’t mean these other guys aren’t supremely talented. The difference in talent is a lot smaller than people realize. The draft in baseball has proved for years that there is no exact science to it. I think the number of first-rounders who make it to the big leagues is like 50 percent.

“At the end of the day, it’s going to take a lot of work whether I was drafted in the first round or not, but it’s been a blessing.”

Anybody who has been around this game for a while understands there are no sure things when it comes to players – especially pitchers. If Joe Savery fails to become an impact player in the big leagues, the critics in waiting will point accusatory fingers – at Savery’s college coach, at the Phillies, at the kid himself. That’s OK, too. Savery gives every indication he can handle whatever comes along.

“I always try to make sure that, for Joe Savery, life’s going to go on, with baseball or without it,” he said. “I’m OK with that now. I certainly would like to play for a good while, but it’s not going to determine my success as a man or a member of society.”

That should suit the rest of us low-rounders just fine. 

This story was posted on June 12, 2009